This sequel to Archer McLean's Mercury changes up the graphical style, but …

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Archer McLean's Mercury was a good game early in the life of the PSP. It featured some very strong graphics for the time and the ability to split your blob into multiple pieces made for some devilishly tricky puzzles. The only issue was that the learning curve was steep. If you got stuck on a level, the game pretty much ground to a halt. I saw players becoming frustrated and quitting rather easily, since the Mercury wasn't very forgiving.

Mercury Meltdown is a slightly different take on the same ideas. Instead of the more realistic and industrial graphics of the first game, you now get a very colorful set of levels and a cell-shaded blob of mercury. The changes put me off pretty quickly. I just didn't find the new look appealing at all; it seemed like a step down from the first game. I'm glad I pressed on though, because even though the graphics appear simpler and less detailed, the gameplay has seen a number of improvements.

Levels now come in chunks of 16 at a time. This lets you skip the really troublesome levels and build your confidence with the easier ones. Getting stuck on a level or two won't totally kill the game anymore. That makes the game feel much less stressful out of the gate, and the tutorials help to get even novice players up to speed. The levels seem to have improved designs to provide a more gentle learning curve and each set of levels has its own theme.

You'll find the same enemies and traps you experienced in the first game, along with some variations on the theme. You can teleport, reverse gravity (which always reverses the controls), change color, and ride on conveyor belts. It's great to see how the designers can take a few simple concepts and ideas and meld them together throughout the levels for some truly maddening puzzles. The real fun comes when you play with a color wheel: you can split your blob into many pieces using the sharp edges of some levels, "paint" each piece using the level's color showers, and then mix them back up to create new colors to get through the color-coded doors. Trying to move multiple blobs around the level while not losing any mercury and keeping the colors separate—or mixing them in specific ways—can be quite the challenge.

But it's a fun challenge, and is much easier on the nerves than the first game. Add in some fun—if slight—party games like racing and an odd "stay on the table while a fan blows you off" game, and you have a solid package. You also have the ability to save and trade replays of your best playthroughs of each level and that great "I bet I can beat it a little quicker/with more points" feeling this sort of game gives you makes it a very pleasant time waster. Veteran puzzle gamers will find something to like, as will people who enjoyed the Monkey Ball series of games. While I had hoped they would mix the strengths of this game with the graphic style of the first one, this is a great update to the series. I hope this sells well enough that we get to see how good it can get with a third try.